Warning: Contains Flashing Images! Strobe on Film

James Lawrence Slattery.

Strobe is characterised as rapid, bright flashing lights. When viewed on screen or experienced in person, this effect often makes actions appear as if they’re happening in slow motion or as a series of still, rather than continuous, moments. There is, therefore, something unique about the effect of strobe lighting when employed in cinema. By dint of strobe’s ‘stunting’ of regular movement, its use in film invites us to reflect upon the construction of cinematic materials and technologies by drawing our attention back to the photographic index. We may also recall early image-based technologies and toys, such as the zoetrope and the stroboscopic disc (from which strobe lighting takes its name). These instruments involved strips of sequential images which were spun in order to create the appearance of movement. Yet due to the nature of their analogue and hand-driven mechanisms, the images would ‘stutter’ between their frames. While celluloid film came to produce a more convincing illusion of movement as still frames were projected at a rate of 24 times a second, when we encounter strobe sequences we are reminded of these earlier processes as the still frames that are transformed into moving images appear, once again, as a series of static moments.

In the final chapter of my forthcoming book, Taking Back Desire: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Queerness and Neoliberalism on Screen (Routledge, 2025), I ask how we might interpret strobe on screen as not only a self-reflective technique that draws our attention to the very construction of the cinematic image and process. In addition to this, I also propose that the arresting visual character of strobe distorts time and movement, producing temporal episodes of repetition and disturbing regular action. By transitioning from forward, linear time to one of circularity that emphasises stasis rather than movement, I argue that strobe sequences be read with the psychoanalytic theory of the ‘death drive’. This concept recognises how we, as subjects of language, perpetually miss our object of desire, rather than ever attaining it. I then develop this line of inquiry by asking how this connection, in turn, can create a ‘queer’ mode on screen; one which emphasises the gap of the image rather than seeking to establish coherence.

This way of reading the formal coordinates of the screen with psychoanalysis and queer theory is part of the larger project of the book, which establishes a new way of approaching how we might theorise queerness as manifested in the moving image and how such instances problematise the mandates and fantasies of neoliberal capitalism. While some of the examples that comprise this playlist are discussed in more depth in my book, others are not. Nonetheless, together they offer examples of strobing on screen and suggest ways that this lighting functions as a critical, as well as aesthetic, formal device.


Blade (Stephen Norrington, US, 1998)

Still from Blade (1998)

Blade opens by introducing viewers to the underground world of vampires as Racquel (Traci Lords) leads the naive Dennis (Kenneth Johnson) to a nightclub, entered via a food-processing warehouse filled with animal carcasses and some suspiciously human-shaped ones too. Inside, the venue is filled with clubbers dancing to techno music under strobe lighting and a sprinkler system that sprays blood over the crowd. Not only does this setting suggest that vampires are a hedonistic, urban subculture driven by an enjoyment of dancing and the consumption of bodily fluids, but the strobe lighting emphasises the importance of light and shadow as it relates to these nocturnal creatures. The flashing light distorts the movement of the dancers and emphasises the vampiric body, which becomes inert in light and alive in darkness. Further, the strobe’s white glare illuminates the paleness of the vampire population, brought into contrast by the titular vampire killer Blade, whose dark skin is reinforced by an armour of black leather.

Blade can be purchased on multiple streaming platforms. A clip of the opening strobe sequence is available on YouTube.

Still from 120 BPM (2017)

120 BPM (Robin Campillo, France, 2017)

120 BPM portrays AIDS activists in Paris in the 1990s as they devise and enact protests to challenge government and private sector inaction concerning the urgent public health crisis, which largely affected gay men. Throughout the film, numerous strobe sequences take place in an unnamed nightclub and frequently lead into or out of scenes of protest, presenting clubbing as an extension of direct political action. Flickering and strobing lights lend a poignancy to these scenes as we see characters fall in and out of the light’s threshold, visually suggesting a fragility to their bodies, some of which are already on the cusp of death as they live with and navigate an AIDS diagnosis.

120 BPM is available on MUBI. A trailer can be viewed on YouTube.

Warning card featured at the beginning of screenings of The Flicker (1966)

The Flicker (Tony Conrad, US, 1966)

The Flicker is an experimental film by Tony Conrad. Unlike other films on this playlist, it is comprised exclusively of black and white frames to create an intense strobing effect. Frames move in different patterns and rhythmic flickering throughout the 30-minute duration, distilling the screen to a patterned surface comprised exclusively of light and darkness.  In early screenings, it was reported that some audience members were not only mesmerised but had physical reactions including vomiting.  

An excerpt of The Flicker can be viewed on YouTube.

Poster for Heartbeats (2010)

Heartbeats/Les Amours Imaginaire (Xavier Dolan, France, 2010)

The love-triangle drama Heartbeats features a notable strobe sequence during a house party. Friends Marie (Monia Chokri) and Francis (Xavier Dolan) watch as their mutual crush Nicolas (Niels Schneider) dances clumsily with his mother (Anne Dorval). As the frame is transformed by a blue strobe light and the electronic pop song Pass This On by The Knife moves from diegetic to non-diegetic sound, the mise-en-scene becomes increasingly stylised and the scene begins to resemble a music video. The dancers at the party seem as if they are moving underwater instead of drunkenly shuffling as the camera closes in on swaying hands and hair in stunted motion awash in the aqua tones of the flashing light. This transition marks a shift in our perspective that aligns with Marie and Francis’s desire for Nicolas. As they gaze at him from a sofa at the edge of the makeshift dance floor, close-ups of Nicolas are interspersed with still images of marble sculptures, including Michelangelo’s David, and the drawings of Jean Cocteau. Here, the admired body is partitioned and broken by the cuts to black and the interjection of fragments of the sublimated body from the canon of European art history.

The strobe sequence from Heartbeats can be viewed on YouTube.

Poster for Sauvage (2018)

Wild/Sauvage (Camille Vidal-Naquet, France, 2018)

Sauvage follows Léo (Félix Maritaund), a sex worker operating in Strasbourg, France. While much of the film depicts the central character in challenging and bleak scenarios, including abusive interactions with clients, there are also rare glimpses of enjoyment. These are found in moments of tender friendship and nightclub sequences where we see Léo briefly experiencing euphoric relief from the struggles and mundanity of his life. In the two nightclub scenes, the strobe pounds and fractures the image, indicating violence at the edge of pleasure as the light arrests the eye with its fast white flashes. The visible gap that strobe presents during these scenes of enjoyment contrasts with the coherent – but unfulfilling – scenes near the end of the film, where Léo attempts to enter the world of financial security and coupledom. In the final moments of Sauvage, there is not a gap in the image, yet it is clear that Léo finds no satisfaction in the life of conventional pleasure as he suddenly sprints from these circumstances.

The strobe sequences from Sauvage can be viewed on YouTube.

Still from Victoria (2015)

Victoria (Sebastian Schipper, Germany, 2015)

Victoria is a single-shot feature film that follows its titular character (played by Laia Costa) as she goes on a spontaneous adventure through Berlin after meeting a group of men at a nightclub. Unlike other films that give the appearance of an unbroken shot, such as Birdman (2014), 1917 (2019) and the pioneer of this stylistic trope, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), Victoria does not ‘stitch’ shots together to give the appearance of a seamless movement but was filmed in one-take, as highlighted by its tagline: “One city. One night. One take.” The film, and its first and only take, begins inside a nightclub where strobing lights fill the screen. As with the club scenes in Blade, 120 BPM and Sauvage described above, this lighting creates a rhythm that is akin to the repetition of the diegetic techno music. While the film omits any cuts, this opening strobe contrasts with the proceeding lack of edits by visually mimicking extreme and rapid cutting as the camera finds Victoria in a crowd of out-of-focus dancers.

Victoria can be rented from Curzon Home Cinema. The opening strobe sequence from Victoria can be viewed on YouTube.

***

James Lawrence Slattery (@jameslslattery) is a writer and academic based in Manchester, UK. Their first book, Taking Back Desire: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Queerness and Neoliberalism on Screen, will be published by Routledge in 2025, as part of the Lines of the Symbolic Series. The concluding chapter of this book, “Bodies That Shatter: The Negative Content of 120 BPM” presents an in-depth analysis of strobe lighting, read with the psychoanalytic theory of the death-drive.

Leave a comment